Sunday, May 7, 2017

"How Abstaining Far-Left French Voters Could Hand Le Pen Victory"

But she still has a slim path to victory, according to experts, one that shares similarities with the more ardent left-wing supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the U.S. election last year.

Polls predict Le Pen will get around 40 percent of the vote, a huge increase on her party's previous performances, but not enough defeat centrist front-runner Emmanuel Macron, who is tipped to score around 60 percent and win the presidency.

If it was as bad as we have been led to believe the guy would not be leading by so much. Unless what happened here with the polling in the last election is also happening over there. Although France is only about the size of Texas. How difficult could it be to determine... unless the people decide not to tell pollsters who they are really voting for.

French politics generally baffles me. They baffle everyone. They baffle themselves. It's a thing with them. Even the low turnout thing. That's surprising to read because you'd automatically expect by surface comprehension that this time turnout will be higher than usual.

Except for one thing I noticed. Well, two things, making a science out of food, and the texts that I've seen written in French about Egyptian hieroglyphs are clear as a bell in both French and hieroglyphs, surprisingly and delightfully clear, so much that you go, "Holy crap these two cultures are kindred spirits." It seemed like it to me where getting the French description of hieroglyphs is assisted with pictures. Those two things are not baffling.

You'd think the result will hing on French population perception of themselves. I suppose that goes without saying but this time their identity really is being directly challenged and that challenge is abetted by France's own national policies.

How much do French people want to keep their precious civilization? You'd think the desire would be very strong. Their delicate excellent socialist civilization. How much do these politically unfathomable people want to keep it? I do not understand French people politically. At. All. Politically I've learned to trust them to do the wrong thing, but always for their own reasons. And some of those wrong things had to do with nationalism. Maybe their young voters imagine themselves strengthening their lovely socialism that relies so heavily on shifting other people's money by keeping their union and strengthening their bonds with it. Maybe France is looking for outside help through political marriage. Maybe they'll celebrate their anniversary instead of getting divorced. Maybe they're see themselves gravely weakened and vulnerable, trembling and shaking before an aggressive outside world and require union for survival and they'll manage saving French culture within that union. I don't know. I don't understand them.

I think she is going to win but she is going to have the same problem as President Trump. She does not have a party behind her in the legislature so she will be stymied in pushing her program.

The only way for both of them to succeed is to go full populist. Put out their program and go to the people. Get them out in the streets. She needs to whip up reaction against the Muslims the way Trump needs to whip up reaction against the antifa shitheads.